I recently realized there’s an incredibly small subgenre of blockbusters that fall into a particularly niche category. I’m not sure what to call this category, but it’s something along the lines of “In addition to everything else going on, for some reason the real bad guy here is corporate espionage!” These are crowd-drawing popcorn flicks fueled by unique visual imagery, which is what makes the corporate espionage twist feel so strangely grounded – movies like Jurassic Park, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, and the 1996 natural disaster film, Twister.
The 80s and 90s were a particularly intense time for spying in the tech industry, so it’s no wonder that this bit of pop culture panic worked its way into action-fueled blockbusters. So, if Twister was written nearly 20 years later and was worried about something other than tornadoes, what would that look like? Turns out director Lee Isaac Chung was wondering this himself, and he has the answer: real estate developers.
Like its predecessor, Twisters opens with an event destined to later become a traumatic memory: an F5 tornado. College student Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and her friends are chasing what they expect to be a small-scale weather event in an effort to test out new technology that can disrupt the momentum of a tornado. Things inevitably go wrong, people die, and Kate vows to stay out of the storm chasing game. That vow is broken when years later, her friend Javi (Anthony Ramos) calls her back for “one last mission” to help further tornado technology. On this last mission she meets YouTube “storm wrangler” sensation Marshall Riggs (Glen Powell), who she dismisses as a showoff, and the perfect weather conditions are set for this film’s version of a love triangle.
Twisters is fine as a bit of competent homage to its predecessor. It swerves away from obvious traps and distracting connections to the original film – don’t expect to see any cameos from the prior cast here – and takes a smarter approach than most legacyquels when it comes to transitioning to modern day. It’s especially effective when it comes to the small details of storm chasing in the social media era, complete with drills that lock a truck down to the earth, tornado shaped swag, and fireworks that fill the inside of a tunnel cloud.
But it’s nowhere near as quirky as the original, and the fear is far less palpable. The characters, from the lines they deliver to the plot they’re involved in, are just a paler version of what we got before. Twisters‘ secret weapon and saving grace is the charisma powerhouse that is Powell, who more than makes up for Edgar-Jones’ lukewarm characterization. It also looks decent, particularly when it follows the approach of less-is-more: simple, dark funnel clouds forming in a wide and empty field take on a lot more dread and anticipation than the big-budget CGI fest we get in the third act, complete with fire tornadoes.
What bothered me most about Twisters, though, was the film’s endless fixation on moral righteousness. Kate’s only real character trait is altruism. She wants to help people! How do we help those people? Have we mentioned that it’s important to help people? Let’s get to the town and help some people! It’s squeaky clean, heroes-don’t-wear-capes, obvious, and above all boring, which fits with the film’s safe, dulled-down approach to everything it tackles. That bizarre corporate espionage antagonist from Twister is replaced by a wordless, nameless real estate developer, because who needs to create a villain when you can just reference collecive hatred for landlords? As strange as it sounds, the grittiness of the original, from its visuals to its morals, is what sets it so far apart from its predecessor. Bill Paxton’s character leaves his perfectly kind fiancée, whose only flaw is that she’s not an adrenaline junkie, for his ex, Helen Hunt’s character. The “bad guys” are corporate rivals trying to sell a weather detection system that could save thousands of lives to “big weather.” Everyone involved is just a lot more grounded, the morals are grayer, and the proceeding story is far more interesting as a result.
If you’re a Glen Powell fan or just itching to see a competent blockbuster on the big screen, Twisters serves its purpose. But at the end of the day, it just made me appreciate the original more.